About the Author

Yehuda Amichai was born in Wurzburg, Germany, in 1924 and emigrated with his family to Palestine in 1936. Amichai published eleven volumes of poetry in Hebrew, two novels, and a book of short stories. His work has been translated into thirty-seven languages. In 1982, Amichai received the Israel Prize for Poetry, and he became a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1986. He lived in Jerusalem until his death on September 25, 2000.

Reviews

Amichai is by now one of the half-dozen leading poets in the world. He has found a voice that speaks across cultural boundaries and a vision so sure that he can make the conflicts of the citizen soldier in modern Israel stand for those of humankind. His wit is considerable: he can say virtually anything and give his words enough sting to defuse both sentimentality and hyperbole.--Mark Rudman

Poets have always talked reverently about unlocking the human heart, but when I read Amichai I wonder who before him actually managed it. This is the real biological substance-the most natural thing in the world, yet he makes it seem like a new thing in poetry . . . the undersong of a people.--Ted Hughes